Dr. Evangelia Balta

Style of Art

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Academic / historian

Branch of Art

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Karamanlidika Studies, Ottoman History of Greek lands

Art Profile

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Dr. Evangelia Balta was born in Kavala in 1955. She studied in the History Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1973-1977) and, thanks to a scholarship from the Alexandros S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, went on to study at the Sorbonne (Paris I-Sorbonne) and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes IV Section in Paris (1980-1983). She received her doctorate in Ottoman History in 1983. She worked in the Historical Archive of Macedonia (Thessaloniki, 1979), at the Centre for Asia Minor Studies (1978, 1984-1987) and taught at the Ionian University during the first two years after its foundation (Corfu, 1985-1987). Since 1987 she has worked at the National Hellenic Foundation for Scientific Research.

Her interests revolve around subjects related to economic and social history during the Ottoman period, as well as the Greek culture of Asia Minor. In addition to her commitment to various programs at the National Hellenic Foundation for Scientific Research, she has also served as a scholarly advisor for the Museum of the Olive and Greek Olive Oil in Sparta, the Museum of Industrial Olive-Oil Production in Lesvos, and the Museums of Wine at the Ktima Hatzimihalis and the Ktima Gerovassiliou (Epanomi). She was academic supervisor for the restoration of the Kayakapi neighborhood (Project Kayakapi) in Ürgüp, Turkey (2003-2008). She has been invited to teach seminars for groups of graduate students by universities in Greece and abroad. She is a founding member of the planning committee of ΟΙΝΟΝ ΙΣΤΟΡ? (History of Wine), a scholarly group which has organized seven conferences on subjects related to wine and wine production (2000-2008). In 2008 and 2010 she organized two International Conferences on Karamanlidika Studies.

In April 2010, Dr. Balta was awarded a grant by the Turkish Cultural Foundation in support of the research project, which was initiated in 2009. It seeks to identify and publish Ottoman archival materials on Karamanlica / Karamanlidika publications, including books, magazines, newspapers and other printed matter, which were published in Turkish written in the Greek alphabet during the period between the early 1800s and the beginning of the 20th century. Since 2012 the Turkish Cultural Foundation has financed a course on Ottoman language and Paleography, a seminar organized by the Program of Ottoman Studies of National Hellenic Foundation for Scientific Research.